Appoint him ambassador to everything? But hey, if you can put up with a stale plot that has a high school reunion, stolen missile codes and Central Intelligence Agency “suits” being ridiculous just for those laughs, you’re welcome to them any time.
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Calvin Joyner (Kevin Hart) was once the king of his college. It’s a dynamic (if not exactly original) pairing, big and little, confidence incarnate and hyperactive ball of anxiety.
Still, in its dutiful crusade against antagonists of all shades, from school bullies to corrupt CIA agents, Central Intelligence deserves respect for attempting to engage with timely thematic material as much as it wants us to surrender and chuckle at the gags.
Who is now a frustrated accountant too ashamed of what he sees as his “peaked-in-high school” life to attend the reunion. In the film business you have to trust others to make you look good; in Central Intelligence, nobody looks good. Initially, the screenplay, credited to Ike Barinholtz, David Stassen, and director Rawson Marshall Thurber, leans heavily on crude, borderline offensive humor.
Amy Ryan is a terrific actor stuck in a nothing part as Bob’s humorless colleague; a cameo from Aaron Paul serves as a reminder that he needs to stop appending “bitch” to his lines. The key ingredient here is the surprising chemistry between Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart. Johnson, playing a lot of hyper-masculine action roles lately, is a dweeb who loves unicorns, fanny packs and cinnamon pancakes. And I think Kevin Hart is a tremendous comedian – but Central Intelligence is a sad waste of talents (a Honey Badger reference, today?). “He said to me, “You don’t let nobody push you around” and he got into it with this guy”. My brother and I were just in the vehicle, looking at each other and then my dad got in the auto, closed the door and it was quiet… The dialogue, as quick and aggressive as a punch to the face, really is a form of action; the gun battles, vehicle crashes, and hurtling bodies are staged with a more-mayhem-the-better lightness that turns violence into something to giggle at, as if it were all transpiring in a Road Runner cartoon.
“Our message to everybody here is be courageous and the first step to being fearless is understanding that you control every single step”, Hart told the students.
For the two actors, the film involved a daily regiment of training, always trying to become stronger and quicker for the many action scenes.
Outrageously goofy with a heart makes for a movie that is both very amusing and warmer than expected. Sure, he’s married to his high school sweetheart, the lovely and successful Maggie (Danielle Nicolet), but even her success makes him feel lousy about himself. (They don’t.) A prologue set in 1996 uses impressively creepy CGI techniques to juvenate Hart into a high school senior named Calvin “The Golden Jet” Joyner, god of his graduating class, and Johnson into Robbie Wierdicht, a much-bullied fat kid who Calvin rescues from a moment of prime humiliation.
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There is obvious humor in the visual of teaming 6 foot, 5 inch Dwayne Johnson with 5 foot, 4 inch Kevin Hart, and in the way that the giant Johnson manhandles the amusing man as if he’s a little boy. For instance, when Bob encourages Calvin to replicate the backward flip he was famous for back in the day, we just know it’s going to come in handy during a pivotal fight scene.
